Your Worst Nightmare: A Water-Damaged iPhone

With the advent of the electronic age, everyone’s had water damage to a device at some point or another. Yet when it happens to an iPhone, it’s absolutely devastating. It’s your worst nightmare. Panic, tears, and yelling don’t help at all, but what will?

I didn’t think it would ever happen to me, as I’m always ultra-careful, although it seemed to happen to my teenage son every few months. One time he dropped his phone in his bowl of cereal, and another time it was in the kitchen sink. The inevitable finally happened to me one day when I was out with friends and my purse got knocked off the sink in the restroom, flipped over, and my iPhone slipped out of the pocket it was in and literally jumped into the toilet. The iPhone had been completely submerged, so I knew it was water-damaged. It worked at first, then turned off, and I could literally see the water inside it. I knew it was cashed. I was camping, so didn’t have anything with me to try the tried-and-true methods of preventing water damage. The next morning it was still wet inside and while it turned on and off, the touchpad didn’t work at all, and neither did the Home button. It was because of all this that I learned what to do when your iPhone gets water damage.

Apple-Care program Doesn’t Work

Apple does not cover water damage in either their one-year warranty or their Apple-Care program. They want to make sure they aren’t covering that either, so have placed sensors on the phone to detect water damage. There is one inside the headphone port, another in the charger connector on the bottom, and a few more hidden inside as well. The sensors will turn half pink/half white with water damage. Some people have been known to put tiny little pieces of white paper over the sensors to cover the ones on the outside, but there isn’t anything you can do to hide the two internal ones.

Solutions

The first thing you need to do is turn the iPhone off and disconnect it from any possible power sources. The next step is to place it in an airtight Ziploc bag with silica gel packets. Those are those little packets that ship inside things that could get water damage. They always carry messages telling you not to eat it and to discard it. A better decision than eating or discarding is to save it for emergency phone saving. If you don’t have any, they can be ordered online.

If you don’t have the silica gel packets or have to wait for your order to come in, in the meantime put your phone in a bag of uncooked rice. It works for the same reason that restaurants put rice in their salt shakers. It pulls the moisture out. Some people have saved their phones successfully with just the rice. The phone needs to stay in the rice/silica gel packets for at least seventy-two hours.

If after trying the rice and/or silica gel, the iPhone either doesn’t work at all or has certain functions that don’t work, it might still dry out, but the chances of that get more and more slim. That’s when you need to decide on replacement options. If you’re still a long way away from the end of your contract, you’ll need to decide whether you want to pony up a lot of cash for a new phone or not.

You can go into the genius bar at the Apple Store and see about a replacement if you decide you don’t want to wait. A replacement phone isn’t as much as buying one outright without a contract, but is also considerably more than buying an iPhone along with a new two-year contract. I actually went to several AT&T stores and an Apple store, and they were all out of iPhones, so I ended up ordering a new one online.

I just ordered a replacement iPhone outright, but you can also order a replacement phone for one that is still in warranty. Apple has their Express Replacement Service that allows you to order a replacement phone, and when you get it, return your old phone. It’s a $29 fee for phones under warranty, and if Apple decides your warranty is no longer valid, you’ll also pay an out-of-warranty service fee and replacement phone charge. I saved the $199 out-of-warranty fee by just ordering a replacement phone outright. I knew mine was beyond saving.

If you do find yourself in the unfortunate position of holding onto a water-damaged iPhone, all is not lost. There are some options out there. There’s a good chance you’ll still be either going without an iPhone for awhile or will have to pay a stiff price to get a replacement, yet it definitely won’t hurt to go through the options. It won’t hurt to just be sure it really is a lost cause before you decide to turn it into a very costly paperweight.

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22 comments

Dansays

Two months ago, the pipes in my house burst and swamped one of the rooms which had my DSL modem and wifi router. I dried them both for about 3 days. The netgear router is stone cold dead, while I’m still using my ZTE modem right now. They are indestructible.

As for cellphones, my wife had a clamshell sony ericsson phone that died due to her sweat. Corroded the thing into oblivion. :p

My g1 phone spent the night in a rain puddle… i took the back off the phone, pulled the battery, sd card and sim cards out, submerged the phone in a bowl of rice and tossed the bowl(with phone) into a toaster oven set at about 180-200 degrees and left it in for a total of 12 hrs of cooking separated by overnight cooling off times. i have my phone back in perfect working order–shinier though… patience is important… you want to get the moisture totally out without cooking the electronics

I dropped my iPhone in the snow this past winter. Stopped working after a couple hours. Did everything I could to revive it including all the usuals (putting it in rice, cold hair dryer). After that didn’t work I found http://www.irevampelectronics.com who were able to fix it. Only took 2 days to fix!

I got a pair of pants REALLY wet and my iPhone was in them. The speaker didn’t work properly, but everything else was fine. So, I put the iPhone face up with the speaker on top of my computer’s topside cooling fan. After a few minutes, it was working perfectly.

Thank you for this!! My audio is the only thing messed up with mine like the volume will show up on the screen and change its self up or down and it’s not loud enough!! All well thanks for tip I’ll try that

My iPhone came back to life after being completely submerged in water, and then sitting a week in a jar full of rice. So glad I didn’t give up on it! Just turn it off and leave it be for a few days…there’s a good chance you can save it

What a resourceful article! I’ve also come across these iLoc Cases that help prevent water and sand damage. Their great for around the pool beach and for things like camping. I got a batch of five for my friends and family for just a couple bucks. Try it out at http://www.ilocstore.com

I thought my iPhone 4S was a goner….I quickly scooped it out of the toilet bowl after it fell out of my back pocket (before sitting down, thankfully!)

I dried it off, and then made the rumored, fatal mistake of trying to turn it on. I saw the screen flash on, and then it DIED!! I shook it very intently to get all of the water out of the little holes, used the blow dryer to get the water to dry (never too close or too hot, primarily just wanted to get as much water out as possible without damaging the phone.) As I tried to find the answer on the net, I was going through the 7 Stages of Grief: Shock and Denial; Pain & Guilt; Anger & Bargaining, Depression; Reflection & Loneliness; Upward Turn; Reconstruction & Working Thru; Acceptance & Hope….In short, I was slightly out of my mind.

First, I figured out how to take the SIM card out. I didn’t have any Silica Gel/DampRid (highly recommended remedy from the net) but I did have some rice. I wrapped the phone in cheesecloth (so rice wouldn’t get into the little holes) and then stuck the phone into a ziplock filled with rice. I set it under a lamp, fairly close to the bag of rice, to create a little bit of heat (not too much though) just to get the water inside to start evaporating into the rice. I kept it this way overnight.

Next day, I found some DampRid at the hardware store, bought a bag and then put the cheesecloth wrapped phone into a ziplock filled with the DampRid pieces. (Important to wrap the phone so little pieces don’t get into the phone holes.)

I left in in for another couple of days, just to make sure that as much moisture as possible was sucked out before trying to turn it on.

Tonight, I took it out, unwrapped it, put the SIM card in, hit the power button, saw the Apple appear, and voila! all functions are restored!!! Don’t give up hope if you mistakenly tried to turn it on just out of the water….give the drying techniques a try, and GOOD LUCK!!!

Okay so I was asleep but I woke up because I was thirsty and I looted water all over and my phone was there. It sat there for like 1o seconds before I moved my phone I didn’t think it was that wet because everything worked but then I got a text and the sound didn’t go off. I didn’t have headphones in but it said that I did so I check to see if it worked with my music but it didnt…. I don’t know what to do I tried the putting a damp q tip in but nothin has worked

I’m wondering if anyone has insight into the resolution of the very exciting “I dropped my iphone in water, resuscitated it and now we’re enjoying a second chance at life together on borrowed time” story. I managed to save mine as well, but my battery needs to be charged about every 16 hours now, and I’m dreading the day things just quit on me (it’s been working for about 2 weeks now). When I pulled it from a thunderstorm, I also opened the back and removed (and subsequently lost) some teeny-tiny screws. I’m contemplating picking up insurance as I’m clearly not a trustworthy owner, but am afraid that my obvious tampering will void any insurance plan if I ever needed to send my phone in the future. Anyone have any insight or advice? It would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I’ve had water damage to my macbook pro which ran me about 2k which is a bit more devastating than an iPhone. also if your teenage son is so careless with such expensive technology maybe you should stop spoiling him and teach him that in the real world you need to pay for your mistakes or you could keep enabling him and yourself.

my phone speaker stopped working cause i dropped it in a cup with a inch of pop…my phone still ringing if somone called or text but couldnt hear anything when trying to call and no music would play on the music player and one of my apps buttons was all fuzzy looking….Well so my cousin told me to turn it off take battery out take the card out and cup my hand around the speaker and suck out the pop with a vacum!! And after ten minites of useingthe vacum to the speaker it worked!!!! she had dropped her phone in the toliet and it worked for her!!!